Positioning data is valuable in planning for both public services and businesses. However, what’s blocked its progress has been the lack of effective integration of other necessary information, such as weather and traffic data. This is data that has only been sporadically available from different sources, which has slowed down and made it difficult to combine important data when there is a need to test and study the impact on different services.
The Finnish Geospatial Institute’s Location Finland service meets this need. It combines different geospatial data, making it quick and efficient to use the data and test different approaches.
“Combining these data allows people a clearer view of phenomena and bottlenecks. This makes decision-making smoother,” says Antti Jakobsson, Chief Engineer and Project Manager at the National Land Survey.
There are practical benefits for many sectors. Municipalities and property operators can quickly find out which buildings are suitable for solar panels by combining 3D data of the buildings with weather and terrain. Industrial parks can provide a common overview of traffic, weather and the environment, allowing them to assess more disturbances.
Combining up-to-date geospatial data speeds things up instantly
In many organisations, finding and combining data before testing anything is what slows down development work. It is this bottleneck that Location Finland aims to eliminate by creating a one-stop-shop of information that allows development to start directly from the service.
“Often, ideas don’t fail due to a lack of skill, but because someone has to hunt down and integrate all the data. Our aim is for development to begin with the service itself instead of months of preliminary data-aggregation,” says Antti Jakobsson from the National Land Survey of Finland.
The key principle of the service is that the information stays with its original producer and is accessed through APIs. This keeps the information up to date and facilitates cooperation between different organisations.
The Location Innovation Hub, which operates alongside Location Finland, provides free development support – from idea to pilot and all the way to funding applications.
Geospatial data is rapidly becoming more important, as an increasing share of digital data is related to location. The new service aims to ensure that this information is usable in practice without the burden of the early work. Location Finland is a service that is under constant developed, and it will become possible to include data that is not publicly available. AI support is also under development, which will make the data more understandable to AI.
Location Finland has been selected for the Data Economy Spotlight 2026 list, which picks out the currently most inspiring data-driven operating models and solutions. The list will be published during the Data Economy Forum III event, which takes place in Helsinki on 28 May 2026. The list is prepared by Data Spaces Alliance Finland.
Location Finland was developed by the Finnish Geospatial Research Institute FGI together with Finnish data producers. The service currently contains materials from the National Land Survey of Finland, the Finnish Environment Institute, the Natural Resources Institute Finland, the Finnish Meteorological Institute, Forum Virium Helsinki, Oulu University of Applied Sciences, the City of Helsinki, and Telia.
Data Economy Spotlight
Location Finland platform
Additional information
Antti Jakobsson, Chief Engineer, +358 50 599 4123 firstname.lastname@nls.fi